Yankees’ Meltdown vs Mets Prompts Early Trade Deadline Questions
The Yankees dropped another brutal Subway Series to the Mets, and suddenly the early trade deadline conversation feels VERY real. Adam and Thomas break down David Bednar's increasingly terrifying save appearances, Austin Wells reaching a breaking point offensively, and the overlooked Anthony Volpe baserunning disaster that perfectly summed up the weekend.
Video Transcript
the Yanks Yard podcast.
Matt Weiner be alongside Thomas Carante.
Uh, I'm supposed to be taking a break.
I'm still taking a break.
I'm supposed to be starting today, start tomorrow, actually.
The Yankees just had to give me one more of these before I left, just one more little fuck you game to send me a, I had to write yesterday.
I was like, I'm trying, like, to figure out the best ways of therapy on days like this in the.
The answer is still right, and so I'm like, I'm sorry, I just have to write.
Like, I know I'm out, but I have to write.
Now, it's like, I know I'm supposed to be out, but I'm not quite yet, so I, I got a podcast.
I mean, Jesus Christ, like, no series wins at Citi Field since 2018 and just an absolutely insane way for this to go down, surface level, you win the Cam Schlittler game on Friday night, rest of the series, especially Saturday, is basically house money, then Saturday is terrible.
But then you come back on Sunday and it's like Elmer Rodriguez against Freddie Peralta.
All right, fine, we'll chalk that up, probably gonna be a series loss.
The, the rotation is aligned for Toronto , you know, you're gonna have to, it sucks to drop the series after game one and, and Saturday is gonna be painful, but Sunday, they'll probably get blown out like 8-2, and you'll just tip your cap and say, well, I guess it's not gonna happen for us against the Mets for now, we'll move along, we'll reunite this week and become Knicks fans again.
Yeah, Subway Series.
I, I don't hold a special antipathy for the Mets, I just wanna beat them when they're on my schedule and my team is 1 and 6 in their last 7 games.
And then we get Sunday, the way it unfolds.
I, I've, in the immediate aftermath of being reactive, I was like, this is the worst regular season loss I remember, under Aaron Judge.
And I know I've said that in the past, and the Domingo Herman no-hitter game into a blown 4-0 lead in Boston was pretty fucking bad.
And the 7-2 Houston lead going into the All-Star break in 2021 was horrible.
And the Miami game last year where Jake Bird and David Bednar and Camilo Deva all go individual meltdown mode, and then Jose Caballero kicks the ball, that's really bad.
I mean, that's the leader in the clubhouse, now that I've thought about it, is last summer , but I think this was worse just because.
The 2021 Astros, that's the series finale, the Yankees had already won the first two, and that's a different variety of frustrating, sends you into the All-Star break on a sour note, but you're like, I mean, they won the series, like, how could that be the worst loss in the regular season in years, you win the series.
And that Red Sox game was horrific, but that's not the first time we've seen them blow a 4+ run lead at Fenway Park, and it's not gonna be the last, and I wish it was, and I would love to say that's the last time that's ever gonna happen.
Probably not, but again, that's a repeatable offense, and every time it happens, it's awful, it drains a little more blood from you, but it's happened before.
The trade deadline massacre last year, horrendous and and painful, but that was a Marlins team that was trying impossibly hard to steal that game over and over again.
It would not roll over and die.
This one's the worst one because these Mets were dead.
The New York Yankees lost 2 straight games to the Mets in which a Mets fielder dropped a run scoring pop-up.
Not 1, but 2.
You can't lose one of those, they lost 2.
Uh, the New York Yankees have allowed lead flipping 3-run home runs over the past 6 days to Kobe Mayo and Tyrone Taylor, two of the worst qualified position players in baseball, guys whose teams have been having conversations about how to cut the cord, like it's like Anthony Volpe, who, by the way, I guess is now the Yankees' like 3rd best hitter, doing it to an opponent.
Like that, that's as bad as it gets, once, it's happened twice, and I feel bad.
The worst part about being a Yankee fan in many ways, is that the people who are data skeptics, like, it finally hit me this weekend, the people who are data skeptics, who are just like, I don't believe in luck, I don't, Trent Grisham is gonna suck forever, and, and they just don't buy into what the data is telling them, they, they can't be saved or convinced because low percentile outcomes that are horrendous happen to these Yankees all the time.
So how can you convince people that the data is showing things are gonna turn or that it's really unlikely that X will continue to happen?
It's really unlikely shit happens all the time.
And, uh, I mean, we're focused, rightly, I think, on David Bednar and Austin Wells after this one, plus the Anthony Volpe moment in extra innings yesterday that's just horrendous and, and the Yankees giving rise to the Mets, uh, but, and all the Austin Wells should be in the crosshairs, David Bednar should be in the crosshairs here.
Uh, Austin Wells combined with David Bednar to throw that curveball, to decide that curveball was a good idea.
But it all sort of just comes back to, it's too soon, I said the season was over yesterday, it's too soon to say that, but this was such a bad loss that no matter what they do, reel off 12 straight wins, I'll be saying, well, it should have been 13, cause that loss was that horrendous.
Like, I won't get over that they gave that one away, no matter what comes after it, and until proven otherwise, Thomas Carante , I'm just, I'm never going to abandon it, they're gonna have to work really hard to make me abandon this take right now.
People are saying, like, oh, the Yankees are awful, you know, half this lineup is awful, the bullpen's awful, the bullpen is awful.
Half the lineup has been irredeemable from time to time this year, but this isn't a horrible team, this isn't the worst team in the league, this is a good team, not a great team, and that's what they're always satisfied in being.
Good, not great, and Aaron Boone is a good manager, not a great manager, and good teams will have horrendous stretches like this and lack consistency.
Great teams will find the resolve to stop this.
Or so I know it's tough to impugn Bednar and Wells and some of the.
These other guys, but this is just not a great team.
There's nothing they could do, remake the bullpen on the fly, you know, swap people in and out when Caballero gets back, find a landing spot for Ryan McMahon.
There's nothing they could do that can convince me this is a great team rather than just a good team, and good teams go home early.
Yeah, we've known this.
I think it's frustrating that again, it comes at the expense of the Mets, um, or it comes at our expense involving the Mets.
Yeah, shout out to the Mets.
Any Yankee fan who's doing the, that was your World Series gimmick, like, shut up.
You, you lost those two games you gave yesterday's game away.
You, you gotta take your medicine.
I, I have no patience for Yankee fans doing like, why are you celebrating?
Why are they celebrating?
They ate your lunch, you melted down.
They should be celebrating.
You should be embarrassed.
Yeah, the, the way, if the Mets had just won a couple of standard games, I'd say, whatever, guys, like, it is what it is.
But Saturday was an embarrassing loss for the Yankees.
Uh, they let Luke Weaver and Devin Williams snatch their souls, um, in moments where they clearly should have and could have taken advantage.
Um .
Yesterday, they, again, don't hit with runners in scoring position.
They get gifted multi multiple runs with the bases loaded walk and an error.
Um, and they still find a way.
They still find a way to not tack on more runs when they're, the door is left wide open, and they find a way to blow it in the 9th inning.
And again, it's not just Obviously, uh, there's a blame to go around for the individual performances, um, that we'll talk about, but this is more so just ingrained in the Yankees since 2020.
Doesn't matter who's here, doesn't matter if you change the nucleus, keep the same key pieces around, um, the Yankees find a way to go in these awful stretches, and I understand, trust me, that this is part of baseball, right?
Um, part of baseball is enduring.
Ugly patches of play, being incredibly depressed with the outcome of games for 2, 3-week stretches.
Um, you look across the league, uh, like we said, last episode, 2 episodes ago, more than half the league is under 500.
We know that this is the case.
Um, but the Yankees started the season off 26 and 12.
They had a couple of injuries that took away their momentum.
Um, but those injuries are not supposed to completely Derail the operation and that's what happened.
You lose 7 of 9.
You lead by multiple runs, and I think 6 of those games and you lose 5 of them.
I think that was the stat.
So like 2-0 thanks to Spencer Jones in the Rodon finale in Milwaukee.
They blew that one early and then they got walked off, but 2-0 in the 7th of the weather.
There's no-hitter, 2-0 in the seventh of the Saturday game in Milwaukee, obviously, 5-1 and 6-3, with just with just a Tyrone Taylor to go in this one.
they also led 1-0 on Saturday, and that one very quickly got away.
Constant leads, uh, many 2 plus run leads, and, and not a lot to show for it.
Yeah.
And um I'm not really, I, I , I hate to drive the point home because we, we, we have these conversations about Aaron Boone every year.
But is it a coincidence that over the last 10 years, the, the Mets are ruining the Yankees' lives?
I, I mean, since the, the line of demarcation is, is 2018, when the Mets' success has really taken off against the Yankees, and that's Aaron Boone's first year as manager.
Um, And uh they always seem to come at weird pockets of the season when the Yankees either need to respond to adversity, um, or they need to keep a hot streak rolling, um, and they always end in crazy fat, you have the Lindor 3 home run game, um, you have the Ahmed Rosario off Aroldis Chapman at Yankee Stadium, uh, like these, everybody remembers these because they were so awful.
Um, and then you have today, which was Yesterday, which was the worst one of them all, and then Saturday, which is honestly like honorable mention, could, could crack the top five, like sick of watching awful.
Saturday was awful.
Sunday is gonna paper over it because Sunday was, again, like, it's between, depending on pick your poison, this or the Marlins game from last summer, probably the worst regular season loss of the era of the decade, but Saturday was abysmal.
Yeah, you, you just, and again, it's former, former Yankees players that are just, that, that are not good this year, like Luke Weaver and Devin Williams are not good this year, and then they look like completely different performers against the Yankees, and uh, everybody is sick of watching it.
Um, uh, the Yankees haven't won a series at Citi Field since 2018, which again, linked to Aaron Boone.
Um, you score, somehow score 6 runs yesterday, but you leave 10 on base and go 1 for 10 with runners in scoring position.
Um, I, I, the stats are at this point completely befuddling, um, underrated, underrated because we're all gonna be focusing on the 9th inning, and like, first of all, rightly so, rightly so, we're focusing on the 9th inning, but Shummannaya was a, a surrender flag.
In that game, 100, he was awful, and, and they just left him in the game throwing 86 mile an hour slop to the center of the plate, and the Yankees tacked on an extra run because of the drop pop-up and Jake Bird is awful and Ryan Yarborough is awful and suddenly it's 5-3, but then it's 6-3 because there's a white flag in there for the other guy.
And Austin Welles' first pitch with the bases loaded dribble or, nothing, and, and then, Again, like, we're, they took him off the hook , right?
But he didn't leave the game, so you still have the 8th, you still have the 9th.
They didn't do anything with, again, the Mets are saying goodbye to you.
They are ending the series, they are saying you, you got this one.
Thanks, guys, you guys got this one.
All we, we're just gonna save our bullpen for the next series.
We gotta go win in Washington, we gotta go win in Miami, we're gonna help you out by throwing Shan Mannaya, no matter what.
Austin Wells does in the 7th, it should be a 9-3 game heading into David Bednar, and it's not.
And this game should have been over when David Bednar got Juan Soto, especially when David Bednar got Mark Vientos, but it's not.
Uh, but ignoring the 6-3, ignoring the blown save, ignoring whatever the fuck happened in the top of the 10th and the bottom of the 10th when dudes ran into each other, when Max Schumann swung at a changeup 7 ft off the plate because he's the first guy, he's the last guy on earth to learn that Devin Williams throws a changeup .
Um.
This should have been a 9 or 10-3 game, and not just because of the Wells at bat, because they left the dude in and just soak innings up, and you couldn't do anything, you were satisfied at 6-3.
That, that's not the worst part, cause the worst thing ever happened after that, but it's one of the worst parts.
Yeah, and then Saturday, they, they do a bullpen game with a man I've never heard of to open, and like, you, again, I think it was, yeah, 3 for 15 with runners in scoring position, 11 left on base, uh, strikeout 14 times in a bullpen game, like, Uh, uh, what are we doing?
David Peterson comes in, who's a left-hander, we're supposed to, the strength of our line-up is supposed to be hitting left-handed pitching, and uh, we don't hit it at all, strike out 8 times.
Um, so, yeah, it's just, it's more confusion over how this line-up is constructed, what the organization was.
Uh, envisioning for them.
And I, I'm not losing hope in what they're capable of doing, but I also didn't expect the trade deadline needs to be this glaring on May 18th, um, and the Mets broke that open as wide as they possibly could.
Um, the Yankees need more contact.
It's an ongoing conversation for the past 10 years.
They continue to think that the home run ball is going to carry them, and they are continued to be proven wrong every single year.
Uh, high strikeout teams are not successful in the postseason unless they pair it with, you know, a multitude of other good qualities, and the Yankees are typically lacking in those, you know, playing tight games defensively, moving runners over, being able to bunt a simple task the Yankees still can't do.
Being able to put the ball in play when runners are on base, being able to put the pressure on the opposing defense.
Um, and the Yankees were doing that early on.
And a few injuries hit, and now you're back to Anthony Volpe being in the lineup, which somehow was a godsend for him at the plate this series, um, and, but a multitude of other issues like We, we could talk about, uh, look, a lot of things went wrong.
Um, the, these guys are not the only people to blame, blame Aaron Judge and not have an RBI in the series.
I, I don't know how that happens, like, I, I, I, I genuinely don't understand how that's the case.
It's another situation of like, just step up, dude, like, you're playing the Mets, it's lack.
Cluster pitching, swinging over shit in the other batter's box, saw it multiple times against underwhelming pitching.
Don't know how that's continuing to happen.
Um, Trent Grisham, uh, I don't know how many 0 games we can like stomach at this point.
I know we've given him the benefit of the doubt and probably still will because the advanced metrics are there and he's largely come through in the clutch, but I mean, at this point, he's hitting 170, 166 with a 77 OPS plus and has subtracted war from this team.
So you can only prove this weekend that he didn't watch Luke Weaver during their time on the same team together.
Like, you don't know what Luke Weaver throws.
If you get a fastball down the middle against Luke Weaver with the bases loaded, why, why don't you go for it?
Why, why don't you go ahead and go for it, cause you're, you're not gonna get another one .
Yeah, um, the David Bednar conversation for me is, is not really new.
I, I like David Bednar, but he's been an absolute drag to watch for most of his time here.
Every time he's in, it, it's rarely ever a clean outing.
There's too much contact, there's too much traffic on the bases.
There is not enough velocity, there's There's not enough swing and miss for him to justify doing all of that.
So, yes, he's the closer for now.
He should not be the closer in two months.
They need another closer.
Um, and, or they need elite support behind him, and I just don't know if that's gonna be attainable.
Um, and then you have Austin Wells, where, like, I'm sitting here wondering how much more leash can the guy get.
I, I was a big Austin Wells fan when he came up.
Um, Last year, 219, with a 275 on-base percentage.
Sorry, that's just not gonna cut it this year, 173, 292% on-base percentage, 58 OPS plus.
Um, Doesn't understand any situation at that, like, he explained after the game that um against Mannaya, he was looking for the fastball, and he got the fastball, and he was late on it, so it resulted in the weak ground ball that he induced to end the inning.
And then um for uh uh Devin Williams, he said he was looking for something up in the zone.
He got it and then he pummeled it into the ground.
Um, so, Uh, uh, the, the, the, the thought process is there, but the execution is so bad.
Um, but even so, like you have Mannaya who threw 4 straight balls to Anthony Volpe, you're gonna swing at the first pitch, really.
Um, you have Devin Williams, who wasn't looking great that inning , and At least looked a little bit vulnerable if you could get in the hitter's count in that uh position.
He swings at the first pitch, um, and then the highlight of him popping out in the ALDS against the Blue Jays when it was a 5-1 game with the bases loaded in 2 outs cause he swung at the first pitch.
It's just like, dude, what are you doing?
Um, and his defense is good.
I think we've commended that a lot, but it's being mitigated by ABS.
So like, I don't need a defense first catcher who hits.
20 hollow home runs a year or 15 hollow home runs a year, whatever it's gonna be.
Austin Wells has been bad at this point, like bad since the second half of 2024.
Um, and The Yankees are continuing to trot him out there every day, at this point.
We, we now know it's bullpen major upgrades, right-handed catcher, Austin Wells gets relegated to the bench.
They, they, they can no longer afford to do this.
I don't know, I, I, baseball is a hard game, we do get it, but when it's continued malfeasance like this, and there's no signs of anything getting better, uh, that you can't continue to move forward with it.
And the Yankees know at this point that if they do have costly injuries, where The depth is affected, and the quality of play is getting dragged down a little bit.
They can't rely on a good portion of these guys to step up.
That's the moral of the story.
So, if you have guys who are starters in the lineup, who can't step up and bridge the gap between, uh, you know, the lowest.
The, the, the, the lowest um capability of delivering to the Ben Rice's, the Aaron Judges, the Cody Bellinger, uh whatever, then you need to make changes.
And Austin Wells has now been up with this team since the last month of the 2023 season, and it's been bad.
Um, he's, he's a below-average hitter, um, the defense is fine, but like, that's, that's not gonna, you can't have the bottom of the lineup be a complete black hole, um, and that's what it is right now.
Now, it's obviously not that way when this team's at full strength, but you cannot, any given season, expect your team to be at full strength the entire way.
The Yankees have learned that since the, again, the last 10 years, and they're, you know, they did it, they, they, they made an effort to improve it over the last, since last year's deadline, but it's just not enough.
So, um, if these guys aren't gonna be able to deliver in these high leverage moments , in these prime spots, or just even over consistent basis like Austin Wells, then, The, uh, the, the answer is right there for them.
It, it, it, the, the, the Mets have forced the Yankees' hands at the trade deadline on May 17th.
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Uh, Austin Wells, like, it's, I, there's no way of knowing, but until proven otherwise, I'm gonna assume this is another bit of medical malfeasance from the.
Yankees, cause Austin Wells got battered with foul tips and hit by pitches late in 2024, was never the same guy in 2024, battled numbness last year, out of the lineup, back into the lineup, didn't get it surgically addressed, they didn't do anything, as far as I can tell, and since then, it's been a complete mess, a disaster, an offensive tragedy.
And he's still on the team, and he's been worse than bad backup catcher level.
Went from a 120 WRC plus bat to, like, the, the, the mid-60s.
He's, he's unplayable, and he's all you have, and you claim that JC Iscara is a savant in the 15.
Teams across the league want him as your starter.
You don't have a starter, so maybe now is the time to try him, maybe we can move him to starter.
Uh, I resent this comment as well that says we thought this guy was nuts that Luis Arraz wouldn't benefit us.
I think you should go ahead and check that tape.
Luis Arraz last year was a bad player.
He, he got a whole lot of hits and hit 290 with a 100 OPS plus because if he's not hitting 330 , he's a bad baseball player.
So what we said was, If he has the, if he's the best version of himself, and if he can hit 3:30, then, yeah, he's an effective player, but what he was last year, I don't want that guy anywhere near the Yankees, uh, and what he was in 2024, I don't want that guy anywhere near the Yankees.
And then what did he do?
He goes to San Francisco, he's been a two war guy, he's hitting 328 with an 807 OPS.
So, yeah, I mean, kudos to you if you saw that coming.
But the Luis Arraz, who was the target this offseason with Jazz Chisholm and Anthony Volpe on this team and with no clear vacancy for Luis Arraz, was a terrible idea, but this version of Luis Arraz, who's found himself again.
He might be here.
Maybe that's a guy we can target at the trade deadline after all.
Who knows?
He's also performing.
He's performing well, uh, nothing.
I like Luis Arriz as a player.
Um, he's he's also, I'm being called an idiot, I believe, and, and that's OK.
He's also performing incredibly well on a bad team, which is not really anything to write home about.
And secondly, we needed to prioritize.
Second base defense because we dealt with Glaber Torres for the better part of a decade, uh, completely ruining games for us.
Uh, Luis, he's objectively doing the things right now though that make this a tough argument to win cause like I, you can't look at his stats and say we couldn't use that.
He's, he's doing everything that he never did for 3 years.
Yeah, um, yeah, his defense improved overnight in San Francisco.
That's great, um.
Uh, I still think Jazz Chisholm is a better defender, and also, this isn't even a conversation if Jazz Chisholm is not doing what he's doing right now.
Luis Arrai shouldn't even be a topic of conversation if Jazz is hitting 260, 250 even.
Like it, it wouldn't even matter.
He'd be generating runs and stealing a ton more bases.
So, um, that's, again, that's not the problem.
The problem is the, the problem is the bottom of the lineup.
Luis Arraz would not be hitting at the bottom of the lineup if he was in New York.
I'm being told Mackenzie Gore is, is, Mackenzie Gore is good, uh, he's got a 4.50A, 4.22 career, but also that context is why, I, I didn't want MacKenzie Gore.
I said that constantly.
I don't really know what's going on.
Definitely.
Um, we've got 22 people in the comments saying that we, uh, don't respect our listeners.
I, I don't know why you guys are saying that, but thank you for still being here.
Uh, I don't know.
I don't know.
I've never seen, never seen that guy.
We respect our listeners tremendously, and, uh, we, we try as hard as we, in this episode of all episodes too, we try so hard not to be, like, mega doomers, but, uh , we have to be today because yesterday was abominable.
And, and anyone who's coming in saying the Yankees have these gaps.
And the Yankees have these holes and the Yankees aren't gonna, you know, get to their peak if they don't fix these things.
You guys are all right right now, you're all correct.
There there is no way for me to look at this team and say, they are going to reach the mountaintop as currently constructed.
They're not.
If you listen to this offseason, you know that the bull, we were on the bullpen and we used to have people showing up in the comments who would say, this bullpen is underrated, or, or actually, you guys aren't being fair to the bullpen, and, like, that's, that's out of, that's out of control.
That was out of control then, it's out of control now.
Like, that that bullpen was, you just look at what they did this offseason, where they had no swing and miss last year, and, and David Bednar as closer, like, we, we can talk about whether we wanna run it back or Like, whether Bednar was good enough last year, putting runners on base and showing grit and showing tenacity and being a bulldog, whether, whether it was valuable enough to make him the closer again this year, and, like, we're just in an insane spot where you're right, they need to look at trade deadline upgrades, and he probably shouldn't be the closer after this summer, but It's still the guy I wanna go to in the 9th inning right now because of the terrible way this bullpen is constructed.
Like, what, they, they had a bullpen that had no swing and miss last year and added Angel Chavi and Cade Winquest, two fake guys, two extremely unlikely to contribute guys, a guy with a 70RA in the Rockies bullpen and a guy who they had to hope could make a leap from Double-A to the big leagues, and he didn't.
And Chavis out and was a useless addition before he was injured.
It's not, like, even if he's healthy, there's no way I'm sitting here today being like, Chavi was a smart move, that was a good dumpster dive, and we could really maybe get something for him, maybe he's an 8th inning guy, you know, down the stretch.
No, not even close, I don't wanna think about it, and people wanna call up La Grande and people wanna call up Giovanni Cruz, and I wanna do those things too.
But I have no interest in, like, thinking that that's gonna be a savior complex move and that Brian Cashman was thinking, playing 4D chess and, and thinking 3 steps ahead because he knew he could call up LaGrande and Giovanni Cruz, don't feed me that, like, this bullpen was abominable last year, they got Got rid of two of the biggest defenders and never replaced them, and, and lo and behold, the bullpen is still poorly constructed this year.
So, I mean, yesterday's loss, it's just one loss, one loss in a pattern of similar and familiar losses, and it's one loss in a line where You go, OK, well , now that I've seen that, I will never feel confident again for the rest of the year, cause I've seen, cause I've seen that.
I, I've seen a David Bednar curveball called by Austin Welles after getting Vientos ahead of a curveball, way ahead of a curveball , and then way behind on a 97 mile hour fastball at the eyes, like, if the game wasn't over before that, the game is over there.
The game's over.
And, you know, you, one hanger can change it.
I, I understand, but there shouldn't be a pitch that gives Tyrone Taylor an opportunity to do that.
The worst thing Tyrone Taylor should be able to do there is line a two-run single, and then you're definitely, your heart's in your throat.
You're not happy with a 6-5 game and with the winning run at the plate, but that's the worst thing that should be allowed to happen, low and away, high fastballs, it's a 177 hitter.
There shouldn't be a world where, uh, if he hadn't hung the curveball, they would be in great shape.
Don't hang a curveball, don't throw a curveball, like, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be, like I said, I promise you this is, I'm gonna be sitting on that game for weeks, months, into the offseason.
Like, regardless of whether they finish one game up or one game back of a playoff spot or what have you, and the seating changes because of one loss, I truly, regardless, I'm gonna have to spend the whole rest of the year couched with anxiety because I watched that game and watched that unfold.
And, and that's honest, that's true, that's accurate.
Like, I'm going to never feel like a lead is safe for the remainder of the season because of that.
So the season is not over, but the protective bubble has been pricked and popped.
It's, it's over, it's done.
I'm not gonna feel comfortable and confident in a single person who comes out of that bullpen, trade deadline or otherwise, current roster or otherwise, starting pitcher, late inning reliever, middle reliever, what have you, cause I know that that's possible.
Yeah, I mean, look, the, the fact of the matter is, is that the Yankees, if they are dealing with this many injuries early on, um, would need a complete overhaul of the lineup.
The, the, who do, who was, was this, yeah, yesterday, the back half of the lineup was Ryan McMahon, Spencer Jones, Anthony Volpe, JC Iscara slash Austin Wells.
Um, As much as Ryan McMahon has been.
This bad.
Uh, nobody expected Ryan McMahon to be this terrible.
We hope that he would be at the bottom of the lineup at least, uh, slugging a little bit.
Um, don't know what happened there.
Uh, Yankees mistake, no one's saying it's not a mistake.
Um, but you have all these worst-case scenarios where Austin Wells is terrible.
Jazz Chisholm, um, kinda started to make a, you know, he's starting to put bat on ball, so it's encouraging, but for the situation the Yankees are in right now, it's, it's not an ideal situation.
So, essentially, after the first, you know, 3 out of the 1st 4 batters of the game, you're dealing with, um, either younger players who are inexperienced or just essentially roster filler at this point.
Um, and all the Yankees have to do is hope that You know, they get guys back from injury in a timely fashion, but that rarely ever happens, um, or guys step up.
So, um, even if they had made, I think, different decisions, um, like if Arri was here instead of Trent Grisham, Uh, if that's the example we wanna talk about, um, I wouldn't have necessarily been opposed to that , but that would have meant, um, you know, Spencer Jones is starting every day.
And I don't know if you'd want that.
I don't know if that would be good.
Um, we've gotten the early returns on Spencer Jones.
I think they're very mixed.
I think he needs a lot more time in the major leagues.
Um, or you'd have Jason Dominguez, would have had the start of the year up here, we don't know if that would have actually been.
Helpful for his development, seeming that the Triple-A stint actually helped him a lot.
Um, so, you know, it's a, it's a lot of mix and match on, on what the, what, uh, the Yankees would have had to do to drastically improve this team.
Um, I, I think the, the, the golden scenario would have been to find a contact first outfield that, and I don't think many were out there, um, in the offseason or at least ones that would have been sensible.
For the roster, um, dudes who can adjust, just dudes who are situational hitters.
Cody Bellinger counts.
Like, he, he usually does have an A swing, a B swing, a contact swing, a power swing, or whatever, but they don't have anybody else who can adjust in different circumstances.
So I'm not necessarily looking for a contact hitter versus a power hitter.
I want a baseball player, a dude who doesn't have one is a really good example of that, yeah.
Not just a guy who doesn't have just one go mode.
Like, we have a whole bunch of dudes who have one go mode, who can't figure out how the fuck to adjust to whatever they're seeing in, in real-time or in crunch time situations.
Yeah, no, I mean, striking out is terrible.
We no one's denying that.
With the biggest complaint with this lineup over the last however many years is that they strike out too much, they don't hit with runners in scoring position enough.
They are boom and bust with the home run ball, which is how we open this podcast.
Um.
Bellinger's great in terms of adjusting.
Jazz, I feel like was great in terms of adjusting.
I don't really know what happened this year.
I wouldn't say great, he was good at adjusting.
Now, this year, it's kind of completely gone.
Um, Aaron Judge doesn't really adjust, but he doesn't really need to.
He just has an imposing swing in the zone that he can catch a lot of, um, catch a lot of pitches if he, if he finds something, uh, relative, uh, appealing that he wants to swing at.
Um, the problems are wells.
Um, Rice adjusts, Rice is great.
Uh, the problems are Wells, McMahon, Grisham, um, and so on and so forth.
So, and Volpe, obviously, so you have, again, 4 guys who don't make contact, who, um, can't really adjust in, uh, to different pitching approaches or just in general, they have the same approach every time.
Um, that's gonna, that's gonna affect things.
Um, Jazz has plate discipline, yeah, I , I don't really know.
What's happened there.
I, I wish, I wish I knew.
Um, that was one of the more disappointing things, but, um, again, we're only 6 weeks in.
I think Jazz is probably gonna turn it around.
We've seen signs of that.
The strikeout, was it yesterday or on Saturday?
I think it was Saturday when the Yankees got runners on 1st and 3rd, and then it was just immediate 3 strikes and he was down.
That, that was upsetting.
So I think that it's not gonna go away overnight, but, yeah, I mean, I think everyone's sharing.
the frustrations with um how the lineup has shaken out in the early going, um, after, after the injuries.
Everything was fine until, you know, two weeks ago.
Um, and then you hit a 9-game stretch, which, um, don't forget, many a team have gone through these 9-game stretches so far.
Majority of the league is below 500.
Um, there's a lot of swing and miss right now.
Um, there are only a handful of teams making a lot of contact and, um, scoring.
Scoring double-digit runs or close to that on a regular basis.
But again, so good teams do that.
Good teams have nine-game stretches like this.
Great teams do not.
So I do think people who are a little overly positive online have, have been pretending that this is just part of the, you know, par for the course.
You're gonna have weeks like this.
You're gonna have 10-game road trips like this.
Good teams, average teams, bad teams, they all.
Share this, right, they all do have stretches like this, but too much of Yankees Twitter has been pacified over the last decade and I think it's the same poison that's infected the front office that, like, you build a good team, you hope everything breaks right in October.
This is another good team with glaring weaknesses that they'll try to fill this summer and they, they might fill them, and, and they might even have a great August and September, but that's not gonna make them a great team.
It's gonna make them a good team.
Yeah, great team comes down to execution.
So let's take swing and miss out of this, let's take um uh let's just take overall , like, you know, hitting profiles out of this, right?
The Yankees don't execute when their backs are against the wall.
You have Carlos Rodan on Saturday.
Fresh count against one of the worst hitters on the Mets, and tries to overthrow a fastball 50 ft above the catcher's head, the ball bounces back into play and then he tries to barehand it and make an off-balance sidearm throw to get the second runner who was never even gonna be close, if he had just simply held on to it.
So, you have those types of things happening, like that's a problem with Carlos Rodan.
He, a lot of his meltdown.
have been with these silly mistakes or these just inability to lock in at a given moment and get the batter out in front of you.
The bases are loaded, yeah, the situation sucks, but you got two outs.
And if you get through this inning, you could probably get another inning, and that would be a great help to the Yankees.
Instead, he did what he did and the game got completely derailed.
And then yesterday, you have, um, and again, take out the runners in scoring position.
I'm talking about overall execution in Um, in these moments, you have, um, Jake Bird throwing a ball directly over the plate to the first battery faces, and like, why, why is that, how is that the execution?
Again, Jake Bird probably shouldn't be here, but that's who the Yankees called on and that's what the end result was.
Um.
And uh the the David Bednar of it all.
Um, David Bednar is an MLB veteran.
He's been here for a while, he's closed in high leverage situations many a time before.
You have a 3-run lead in the ninth, yeah, you get into a jam, there's 2 runners on, but you're facing a guy batting 188 with a 300 slug, you gotta know what to throw.
You gotta know, and if your catcher says, throw your worst pitch, you say, I'm not fucking throwing that pitch, dude.
Why would I throw that pitch?
After the game, Tyrone Taylor said that he was sitting on curveball, anticipating curveball.
That's what the hitting coaches told him, that's what the scouting report said.
Um, oddly enough, he only threw one curveball to the 4 previous batters.
So, you're sitting there wondering, was this just luck?
Were the Mets just saying, sit on curveball in case he throws it cause then you can pummel that, um, cause he was Locating his fastball relatively well.
Um, but that, that, that's it right there.
It's execution across the board, even if you take out the, the, the hitting is always gonna go in the lulls.
You look at how hitting's been depressed in Major League Baseball for, for the past 15 years because of how good hitting's gotten, right?
So, it's on the rest of the team to make the defense, execution.
How about Anthony Bope?
Let's talk about this for one moment.
The Yankees, after David Bednar blows this game, they go to extras, of course.
They don't get a run across in the top half of the inning cause the Yankees don't perform in extra inning games on the road.
Um, the Yankees remove a left fielder.
They bring Max Schumann in to play the infield.
They have 5 infielders to get this runner at the plate.
What happens?
Carson Benz hits a chopper up the middle, shaded toward the second base side.
Anthony Volpe is darting across the infield from the, from the, the shallow shortstop position, runs into Max Schumann, and no play is made.
So, that's execution, that's the coaching staff.
If you are Aaron Boone, and you bring in 5 infielders, everybody's gotta know the assignment, that needs to be communicated to the players.
Anthony Volpe should know he should not be going cross-body.
Extending himself to then throw with his momentum going in the opposite direction.
That's never gonna get the out of the plate.
So there, there's 7 other elements to this team not performing that goes well beyond strikeouts, that goes well beyond swing and miss, that goes well beyond runners and scoring position.
I complain about running in scoring position all the time.
That's the most important stat for me, in my opinion, as a baseball team.
Do you drive the fucking runs home when you have the opportunity to?
No, you don't.
Great, then you're probably not scoring.
Or if you are, you're not scoring in the moments that matter cause you're relying on hitting a home run in, you know, the bottom of the ninth when you're down by 2, which is not a a winning recipe in my opinion.
Execution across the board, and that's where the coaches come in to me, that's where the players' attentiveness comes into me.
So, to me, again, Luis Ar arrive here, I, I think would have been good.
I think it would have been fine.
That would have required the Yankees to do more roster overhauling, which uh they didn't wanna do, and I think generally, it would have been difficult for them to do and the fans might not have been entirely happy with it.
It comes down to the guys in the locker room in the clubhouse, understanding the assignment and knowing what to do at any given situation.
My money's on the Milwaukee Brewers.
Or uh maybe the Tampa Bay Rays not making that infield gap that the Yankees did yesterday.
And that got swept under the rug because of the 17 other things that occurred before it, but it's a great example.
It's a great example of You have a guy in Anthony Volpe who has been here as an everyday player since 2023, and he still doesn't know what he needs to do in extra innings with the runners on the corners to prevent the game-winning run from scoring.
So that tells me all that I need to know.
There's no lineup reconstruction you can do to fix that.
That's messaging to the players, that's players having their head on their shoulders and not letting the moment overtake them.
The Yankees constantly let the moment overtake them.
And over the years, not just this season.
Oh, constantly, and if you're trying to say that, like, this is, you know, not an end all be all, it's just a bad week, it's a bad 9 days.
And there are plenty of managers across the game of baseball who I have utmost confidence in to steer the shit back around and and to get this team off the snide and back into doing what they need to do.
I have zero faith in Aaron Boone to do that.
In 2022, 2020203, 2020204, 20205, and of course, the year-long plague that was 2021, he didn't do it.
We're we're on a half decade plus of him being unable to do this.
So then why do I think he can, the road extra innings thing not an accident.
Second worst team in baseball, somehow not the worst.
At road extra innings since they instituted the Ghost Runner.
This is not an accident, this is not bad luck.
This is not something that will eventually regress to the mean.
This is an errand, and yes, sometimes it feels like the universe is just laughing at you when you, like, put up 2 in the top of the inning and give up 3, and it's like , well, oh well, what are you gonna do?
But most of the time it's bad execution, and do I think the Yankees had a great chance to get the runner at the plate yesterday?
Even if that was done perfectly, no, no, but, but you needed to give yourself a chance.
Don't run into each other and give yourself no opportunity.
Give me a play at the plate.
Know what you're supposed to be doing so that someone's executing properly.
It's Anthony Volpe and Max Schumann who shouldn't be out there.
22 dudes in, in this five-man infield who, who shouldn't be here, and, and, and that's what you get.
You get abject nonsense, the, the cherry on top.
To end that game.
This was a lot like, I, I mean, just pulling out horrible losses, one that I almost forgot about, one that's easy to forget about cause it was in the middle of 2020, um, like, The the Zach Britton game where it's it's 4-0 and Jay Haf gives up all the runs back where they take a 7-4 lead in the eighth, Zach Britton gives up 22 outruns, 7-6 in the ninth, leadoff guy on, Billy Hamilton's on second, and then he tries to steal third, they gun him out, they get the first out of the inning and you're like, just like Juan Soto yesterday, like, wow, that looks really bad, crisis averted, and then JD Davis homers off parole is chapter.
Oh, my God, that guy hitting one whatever ties the game, they lose an extra inning, very similar yesterday, the, the Bednar curveball just, again, just dining out on that curveball, whether he got lucky, whether the Mets coaching staff picked something up or not , just getting that second out on a curveball, curveball high heat.
And then starting off the worst hitter, probably the worst hitter on the team with the pitch that has the potential to be this big looping dumb hanger, and then, of course, it is.
Did he, he threw a curveball to Vientos?
I thought he threw 3 straight fastballs.
No, he got one slow curveball, even slower curveball, and then hit her at the head.
Really?
And it was great.
Yeah.
It went amazing, and it went right back to the worst curveball I've ever seen to finish off the worst batter in the line-up.
Um, I mean, I know the comment section of this podcast was, was noxious and toxic for a bit because I don't really know why we're, we're all going at it on Luis Saraz, but again, Luis Arraz is doing exactly what, yeah, he is doing what the Yankees need right now.
If they had a guy like that, hitting 333 with rush in scoring position, who's son.
playing aggressive and improved defense and now maybe has a defensive home, I would love to have that guy on this team right now.
And, and if you knew that that was what he was gonna do this year and you thought he was the perfect antidote to what ailed the Yankees, then I'll give Stefan Tangs his flowers, like, you're right, he looks great.
Um, is he gonna do it for the rest of the year?
I don't know, but right now, it would be amazing to have him on the Yankees, but it would be amazing to have some combination of guys who are not one-trick pony.
The the trick of scoring runs and hitting is a better trick than whatever the hell Austin Wells and Anthony Volpe and Trent Grisham do most of the time, but it would be great to have some people with nuanced approaches who are able to adjust and we, we just don't have that.
We, we have Cody Bellinger, and then we have Aaron Judge, who is a top-tier player in the sport of Major League Baseball, but he's got the wrong supporting cast for the 9th year running, like, Gio Rochella retired today.
That Gio Rocella, in some ways, was the OG Luis Arraz where, like, yeah, defensive metrics didn't like him, and his whole time here, I was like, you gotta be, like, this is the best argument for never reading a defensive metric as long as I live, cause this dude is spectacular, always in the right place at the right, like, I don't care if he has to, if his range is low, he's making every sprawling diving play.
And getting timely hits on top of it, like, he's a good baseball player, I don't really care what the numbers tell me.
You do need good baseball players.
I don't think you can base your whole philosophy around limiting power per se, but you do need good baseball players.
So if you, if you can get more of those, you get more malleable people, more people you trust with the game on the line, not to do something silly, then that's how you win.
You surround Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger with players who know their role, like Paul Goldschmidt's had an amazing year of knowing his role so far.
And the Yankees have to find a way to get him more playing time and keep Ben Rice in the lineup and figure it out, it's, it's a tough balancing act, but Ben Rice catcher maybe needs to start sooner rather than later.
Um, and every time I watch the Mets, I just, I just don't know how this is, I never see the Mets team that is a disaster.
It'd be so great to see the disaster Mets.
They dropped pop-ups won these games anyway, but, like, you had Joe Davis doing, oh no, the Mets, oh no, the Mets on, on Saturday, and you had Mets fans crying national broadcast bias, and it's like, I mean, you've made a ton of mistakes since 1986, you fall on your own, like the.
The Organization has had plenty of malfeasance.
It's not Joe Davis's fault that he comes after the Mets and they're under fake underdog story this year with a $350 million payroll.
Um, but again, we can't laugh, we can't stop.
It's been a decade.
And you wanna talk about Juan Soto, um, you know, Carson Benz and AJ Ewing were the outfielders he envisioned when he decided to sign up with his team, and that's why he said the farm system was better than the Yankees.
That's not true.
We know that's not true.
That's a lie, you made that up.
But right now, what am I supposed to say?
Nothing.
I got nothing to say to you on that.
That's an absolute lie.
Juan Soto is lying, he's pretending, but I'm not allowed to talk about Juan Soto anymore cause he was only a Yankee for a year and my team loses every time they face the Mets.
I'm not allowed to talk about any of these things.
Can't talk about Luke Weaver, can't talk about Devin Williams, until my team face to face.
I used to say, I don't trust, I trust everyone else to take care of the Red Sox, except for my team.
I'm there with the Yankees and the Mets now.
I trust everyone else to take care of the Mets, not the stupid Yankees.
I do not trust them face to face.
Um, and so Ben Verlander taking a victory lap this week too.
Like, you know, what, what did I say ?
I tweeted this Juan Soto thing, you know, it's, it's about more than money or whatever.
Uh, yeah, I mean, it's about money.
In a way that you're not giving it credence when you tweet that snarky shit.
It's about an owner with the money to go further than Hal Steinbrenner's gone.
It's about an owner who has such a stupid amount of money that if Juan Soto is like, can I have this thing, he's like, yeah, whatever, I don't care, no limits on me.
That's what, it's about that variety of money.
It's not just about the contract to Juan Soto, it's about Juan Soto knowing that, like, this dude's a lunatic.
And we'll continue wasting money.
Now , maybe he's pivoted off that a little bit in recent years, he's become a little bit more cost-conscious.
They had a chance to throw a whole bunch of money at Cody Bellinger this offseason and didn't, of course, that left Tyrone Taylor on the team and that a lot of good that did us.
Um, but Everyone is pretending that it's about something it was, I mean, it was about the Mets have not reclaimed New York.
No one is the little brother, no one is the big brother.
The Mets are the little brother against everybody else except for the New York Yankees who they own, so we don't have the right to, to talk, to, to mess, to wrestle .
We can't do anything.
We just have to sit and listen to the brash Juan Soto twisted lie fest because we can't win these games.
We had yesterday in the bag, we gave it away, like.
This is the kind of stuff that we deal with and uh we can't talk smack until, even if the Yankees finish this season ahead of the Mets or whatever, they have the head to head.
Again, they have the head to head wins.
What, what are we gonna do?
I'm not gonna say anything to the Mets fans, you win.
I don't, yeah, I mean, I, I don't care.
I never cared about, uh, like, mopping the floor with the Mets.
It was never like, yeah, winning games is great.
I'd rather win games.
Why would, why would I wanna lose games, especially to another fan base that hates me.
Um, but it's just the fact that The Yankees, again, it's the execution, so you know you're going into this game, you know the stakes are high because you know the Mets wanna beat you more than you wanna beat them.
I think that's, um, that's not even an insult at this point.
It's just, it, it, the Mets want to beat the Yankees because Mets fans hate the Yankees, much like a lot of other fan bases do.
Um, and the Mets are a little bit inconsequential to the Yankees because The games don't really matter in terms of, like, the scope of the league and where you end up at the end of the season.
Um, but, You see this Mets fan behavior online, like, crying about Chris Kirchner's column about how his opinion was that Juan Soto should have been a Yankee for life.
And they can't even grasp that because how could you, how could you think that?
He only played one year with the Yankees, and then the Mets signed him afterward.
Why would he have any, why should he have been a Yankee Life, and it's like, I mean, do you not understand the concept of baseball?
Like, the Mets are historically a bad franchise.
There is nothing to dispute that.
They haven't won a World Series in 40 years.
They've only been to 12 World Series since that win.
Um, they have missed the playoffs more times than they've made the playoffs.
They've had Historic collapses dating back to what they blow 8.5 or 9.5 in September.
Um, they had a historic collapse last year, year, yeah.
So it's just like, this stuff happens where the Mets' performance, and I'm not bragging on the Mets, it's just what has happened with them.
There is a Rolodex of things the Mets have done wrong and it, it's, it's phone books higher than what the Yankees have done wrong, especially.
Over the last 40 years.
So, for a beat writer to say that Juan Soto should have been a Yankee for life because, A, the history and legacy of the Yankees holds a lot more power and um just overall, um Uh, like, it, it lifts your legacy when all is said and done.
And if Juan Soto wanted to be one of the greatest players of all time, without having to deal with cosmic nonsense that the Mets have dealt with, yeah, he should have chose the Yankees.
And when the details of the contract were revealed, and it came down to $5 million guaranteed dollars, yeah, there's an argument to be had that he should have been a Yankee for life.
Um, because those were, he was choosing between two teams.
The Dodgers were never really involved in this.
No other team offered, I think, in excess of 12 years.
The Yankees and the Mets had the biggest and highest offers.
And it came down to two teams, one team that has the history behind it of over a century, and another team who was an expansion team in the 60s, who has done nothing but shot themselves in the foot for the better part of four decades.
Um, and then you have Mets fans complaining about Joe Davis's call on Saturday, saying, oh no, the Mets, and it's like, Do you think like random national announcers are just like, yeah, let's, you know, let's fuck with the Mets today, that'll be fun .
No, the Mets have made this their identity over the last however many years in your own house.
Like, if you're a Mets fan and he dropped that ball, what did you say?
Like, they're gonna get out of this.
I love them.
No, you didn't.
What did, what did, what did Gary Cohen say yesterday when Bobachett dropped the fly ball?
Said the same shit, oh my God, he dropped it.
What are the Mets doing?
Something like that.
But either way, I mean, yes, I understand he has the right more so to say that than Joe Davis does, but don't just go out, don't start complaining about, oh, would national broadcasters do this to any other team.
Well, uh, no, they wouldn't do it to most teams cause most teams are not you.
Most teams don't have the best record on June 12th, the best record in MLB on June 12th, and then need to win game 162 against a shitty Marlins team to get in the playoffs and lose it, and then end up barely above 500 and out of the post.
Season.
Like, that doesn't happen.
So, Mets fans talking out of both sides of their mouth, woe is me all the time, calling Ben Rice a slap dick prospect and can't believe Carson Benz isn't better than him, and then, at the other end, oh my God, I can't believe people are making fun of us even though all I do is complain about this team and make fun of myself all the time.
Like, and then, what, I, I'm not, it is what it is, it's what happened, but the Yankees.
Fumble that.
The Yankees have the opportunity to kick the Mets while they're down.
The fan base is in shambles.
The players , you look at this lineup, you look at the Mets' 2026 season stats, it is a fucking disaster.
This is not a major league team.
This is an awful team.
It's Juan Soto, and then I don't even know what else.
Marcus Simeon got us over and over this weekend.
That dude is the king of Wah.
Bobachette, like, he's in the lineup making $42 million this year.
He's been one of the worst regular players in, in Major League Baseball.
This is a $369 million payroll this.
You're like, I'm not doing the underdog gimmick anymore until you get to the 9th when they haven't had a 9th inning comeback since the 2024 playoffs.
Then, after yesterday, absolutely that was an underdog unexpected victory that the New York Yankees gift wrapped for the New York Mets, but the, like, acting like this is just a normal scrappy Mets team that is 6 games under 500.
Trying to make it through this difficult thing we call life, and that Joe Davis has no right to laugh at your pain or, or accentuate you, but he's not laughing, just highlight the fact that it happened again, this is crazy.
He has every right to do that.
This is the most the 2nd most expensive team in baseball with a bloated, ridiculous payroll, finding out that it is not that easy.
And we said, when they, when they signed Juan Soto and finally crossed that bridge, that new threshold of being not just a team that invests in the Major League roster, but that bloats itself to the point of ridiculous, like, you gotta be really careful what you wish for here.
You, you've got Juan Soto now, you are the big dog, you are going to be treated like it.
If you continue doing Mets stuff, you are going to have a tough time being online.
Because people are gonna be ruthless and harsh to you in the same way that they have been to Yankee fans for 2025 years.
Um, and so far, other than against the Yankees, the Mets have underdelivered.
Yeah, I mean, is it our problem that David Stearns decided to go, to, decided to tell Pete Alonso to fuck off and go sign Jorge Polanco, who's not a first baseman and who's continuously injured?
Was it anybody else's decision to trade for Luis Robert when not a single other team in Major League Baseball wanted him and you knew that he had chronic injury issues for years?
Like, this is the stuff I'm talking about.
This is what gets you, this is what gets you made fun of in the national picture, and you guys are cri criticizing David Stearns every minute of the day.
You want Carlos Mendoza fired, and this is the discourse that you've created, and rightfully so, because things are not good.
I would be raging against the machine if I was rooting for the Mets.
And they had put up the start to the season that they did.
Bo Bechett, paying Bo Bechett $42 million for what?
He was never worth that amount of money.
Why did you do that?
To steal him from the Phillies?
That was, that was the logic.
The Phillies are better off without him.
They're doing better, they're doing better, and they, they, they have climbed out of a hole that the Mets at, uh, until yesterday, couldn't have imagined even doing.
So, all of this.
That you're complaining about on Twitter, you're putting all of the thoughts out there, and I understand it's just a, a section of the fan base, it's not everybody, but it's still a very loud section of the fan base that's clearly getting its way or clearly is allowing the discourse to reach the top.
You can't fucking cry when people then say, oh, all the stuff you've been saying, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you suck.
Like, look at all these bad decisions you made and, and And, uh, look at all these poor fundamentals you have and look at all these players, uh, not delivering in these big moments, and look at all these predictable injuries you have.
How about this?
Why is there any Francisco Lindor Juan Sotorift reports ever?
That should never happen.
That should never be a talking, whether it's true or not, that should never leave the clubhouse.
That should never reach the media.
That someone in the Mets should not allow that to, to happen.
That story should not run.
That would never happen if that was with the Yankees.
Even if Aaron Judge and Juan Soto had, had something between, that would never reach the media.
This is what the Mets do, and they should be made fun of.
So like, enough of that, and Ben Verlander's, Ben Verlander's hot take after the, after the Mets signed Juan Soto is that the Mets will win more championships than the Yankees over the next 15 years.
OK. Sure, the Mets winning two Subway Series over the last two years doesn't now validate that claim.
Yankees fans are gonna quote tweet that tweet and shit on you until the Mets actually win a World Series.
So , that, that's, you, you put yourself in the, you did what Mets Twitter did.
You put yourself in the crosshairs, you take the abuse from it, and then you complain you're taking the abuse from it because you did, it's the Eric Andre meme.
How could somebody, how, how could somebody do this?
Oh, it, yeah, I did it.
I did all of it.
Wow.
So, that's the part that's annoying to go back to the original point, the Yankees allowing this team and this fan base to escape all of this for a moment when they could have pummeled them into the dirt.
The Yankees never did, they never stepped on, their opponent's throat, regardless of what the lineup.
I would venture to say that even if Giancarlo Stanton and Jose Caballero were here right now.
It wouldn't have ended like this, but it's similarly would have been some sort of disappointment.
Maybe it would have been a series loss, maybe they would have scraped by in the last, in the, in the rubber match, and after making countless mistakes that they should have never been in a certain position, but like, this is how it always turns out, and this is what the end it goes back to the execution and the identity of the team.
And that's the main problem to me.
I, I just can't believe, like, I mean, if Caballero had been playing, he would have crashed into Volpe at the end of the game and we would be talking about something different.
I, I can't believe that, um, that, that neither, after watching this series, that neither team swept it.
Cause there was a world, I mean, walking into it, I was like, the Yankees are walking into a trap, the Mets are going to sweep them in this series.
And when Cam Schlitler dominated the Mets on Friday, I was like, oh my God, like, actually, Cam Schlitler, again, like, Cam Schlitler and Anthony Volpe power ranked as the one and two best players in this series for the New York Yankees.
I I don't know why this is happening, uh, in my life, in my daily life, why I have to think about this, but Uh, Cam Schlittler delivered, delivers on every big stage, did it again, and the Mets, you know, looked unprepared for the moment or whatever.
And at that point, I'm thinking, like, all right, well, then this is the exact opposite, the Yankees need to figure out a way to sweep this and watching the way that the last two games unfolded with the Mets playing abominable defense, letting the Yankees back in a Saturday.
game, figuring out a way, you know, Carl Son throwing that two-run wild pitch, the bases loaded, no outs for Weaver and Devin Williams getting into a three-run game and the way that yesterday unfolded, obviously, with more bad malfeasance with the bases loaded and Sean Monaya surrendering and all that stuff, it just reinforced that thought of, like, Uh, the Yankees blew two of these games spectacularly.
I can't believe they didn't blow a third, but watching the way that the Mets played and watching the way that Cam Schlittler dominated on Friday, I can't believe they didn't sweep this.
I can't believe no one swept this.
But of course, I can believe that we lost the series.
That's how it goes at Citi Field, always, forever and always .
And then Mets fans getting in their feelings about Juan Soto, people saying he should be a Yankee for life, or he was only there for half.
He never chose to be there, he chose to be on the Mets.
Yeah, OK, you can go to sleep at night with all that stuff.
But Juan Soto posted an Instagram story after Friday's game that was like so great to catch up with my good old friend Aaron Judge or whatever.
It's coming from Juan Soto.
It's not coming from Yankee fans.
Juan Soto is saying it.
John Hammon, Juan Soto, uh, spoke to John Hammon talking about his time with his decision to go with the Mets over the Yankees.
I'm already here.
There's nothing we can do about it, so no second thoughts.
Wow, what a ringing fucking endorsement there from Juan Soto.
Um, so will this debate will rage on forever.
And it is not Yankee fans, and it is not rent-free.
It's the natural conversation that is always going to happen.
And if the Mets win the World Series, it is going to be the secondary story to that.
Column, headline column will be Mets win World Series.
Second column is Juan Soto made right choice.
The Yankees win the World Series, it will be Yankees win World Series, Yankees pivot unbelievably from Juan Soto.
He's a centerpiece player in Major League Baseball, and he chose the Mets.
And he keeps having strange friction with Francisco Lindor or hugging Aaron Judge and posting, I love my friend or whatever, so we're, this is not going to die.
And it's not fans' fault.
Although Mets fans made a sign at the Saturday game that was like, I'm living rent-free in your head.
I mean, if I could retire one phrase, it would be rent-free.
It would feel so good to get rid of it.
But rest assured, if the Yankees ever do win a World Series, I'm gonna post rent-free 10,000 times.
Uh, we've done a full hour.
The Yankees planned a bullpen move today.
They said they're gonna have some tough conversations overnight, like, how do we improve this unit?
What do we have to, what can we do in exactly 1 day to, to at least get.
It's closer to the right track and, and we, an hour has gone by of us speaking and nothing has happened at all.
So, like, is it gonna be creative, interesting, or is it just gonna be Yeri Delos hands up for Jake Bird to get a fresh arm in there?
We get Giovanni Cruz, who's been pretty good, LeBron Hay was great.
Over the weekend though, he started, so he ain't pitching out of the bullpen this week for the New York Yankees.
So it's either Cruz or it's the most boring thing of all time, or, or it's even, it's nothing.
Which would actually be worse than the most boring thing of all time, but in this hour, I thought we would get a shuffle, and instead, uh, we got absolutely nothing.
Nothing, but what does it matter?
Because it's gonna be bullpen fodder.
It's probably not gonna be enough, um, to help.
They forgot to do the bullpen.
They don't have a top 50 arm in K per 9 coming out of the bullpen this season.
Top 50.
So nothing that is done today will change that.
Nothing that is done at the trade deadline will do anything but fix it months too late.
Yep.
Oh, and would you look at that?
We got the Blue Jays on tap and the Tigers, who are a fucking disgrace, awakened them, that didn't awaken them but gave them a series win after they at least Vlad, Vlad homered in Detroit.
So like, we all know Vlad is going to homer this week at Yankee Stadium, but he was on.
A massive homer drought, he can no longer break that drought here because Detroit gave him one, so that's great.
Uh, but he can homer multiple times here in a four-game series, and he will.
And then around the corner after that comes Drew Rasmussen and Shane McClanahan and Nick Martinez and the Tampa Bay Rays.
So, I mean, what, what would a reasonable expectation be from a good, not great Yankee team at its lowest point of the season, taking on these two formidable opponents, one of whom ate your lunch last year, one of whom ate your lunch in the one series you've played this year.
Um, I mean, I'd be satisfied with 4 and 3, they probably need 5 and.
24 and 3 feels like a pipe dream.
That feels crazy.
How am I even saying that?
How, how are they gonna win two of these games?
That's what the Sunday game does to you.
What does a win feel like?
It makes you completely forget how it is possible to get the final out of a baseball game.
And so I'm going into this series, I could have been going into this series riding a solid series win at Citi Field with an exciting final game, with a nice statement made behind Elmer.
And and at least getting to the finish line and saying, I, I may not have liked the road trip, but I liked the note it finished on, and now we are saying , I mean, I, I, 2 and 7 road trip, that could have been like 5 and 46 and 3, even with half the bullpen meltdowns, it would have been satisfactory.
Instead, nothing to hang your hat on at all.
If Cam Schlittlers not pitching, what's the point?
And uh who does Cam Schlitler hand the ball to?
Unless you're up 7 or 8-0, like, what is the end of a Yankee game ?
How is it possible to end the Yankee game in the win column?
That's where I'm at right now.
These are the opponents you don't wanna see.
Yup.
So, um, it's, again, it's up to the Yankees.
If they wanna let this keep bleeding, it'll keep bleeding.
And then we'll have the early swoon, and then everybody can have their debates on whether the swoon starts in May or June, July or August, doesn't fucking matter.
It comes down to execution.
The Yankees are not executing whether they have full personnel at various times in the last few years or when they're facing adversity with injuries against Lesser teams.
Um, the Orioles are a terrible team, the Mets are a terrible team, even with the not fully, uh, you know, impactful lineup, the Yankees should have been able to not lose in the embarrassing ways that they did, but they did.
Now, the Blue Jays are here, and you have an opportunity to turn things around against a division opponent who's been bad, who ate your lunch last year.
I don't know.
Respond, prove, prove, prove it otherwise.
It's May 15, it's May 18th, 15th was the day that I could start complaining.
Don't let me complain on Thursday.
I don't wanna complain on Thursday.
I just love when people are like, that 16 and 3 stretch in the middle didn't matter, it was just against bad teams.
So they lost two series to bad teams this week.
You know, bad teams aren't an automatic win.
If you are uh too full of yourself or not well equipped or your personnel is not there, you're gonna lose series and, and games, you're gonna blow games to bad teams.
The Mets have more talent than they've shown, the Orioles don't, but both of them are bad teams right now, and it's not like Bobachett went supernova in this series, or Luis Robert Junior got healthy and hit 3 homers off you.
You just gave these away .
You got Marcus Simeon ran over you, that's true, but you just, you, you handed it to a low-quality opponent.
And the I, I think the Mets are probably gonna get off the mat at some point, look, they're going on a road trip to face two teams that are theoretically playing over their skis, but then again, every time the Mets go to Miami, they look like garbage.
So who the hell knows?
I don't know what the Mets are gonna be from this point forward, I don't know what the Orioles are gonna be from this point forward, I don't know what the American League playoff picture is gonna look like, but I am tired of people who are like, I'm not panicking about the Yankees yet, cause look at the AL playoff picture or whatever.
Again, that's accepting mediocrity, that's saying that the Yankees will probably make the playoffs cause they don't have a lot of real challengers.
I will say the same thing , the Yankees are probably gonna make the playoffs.
If they don't, it's a holy shit disaster.
But when they get there, if they get there, what are you rooting for?
I know now that they have the same DNA as, as last year, the year before, the year before that, in, in tight games, in, you know, bad stretches that they let snowball, are they're gonna let it snowball to 50 games, or are they're gonna steer out of it at some point cause the American League is not that good?
Well, this is not what you wanna see on your schedule if you're trying to steer out of it.
If you're Aaron Boone trying to prove to me that this is more than just a good team.
Um, the Yankees are eventually going to be better.
Than they've been this past week.
But good enough, I highly doubt it.
Uh, well, what a great day to take a break.
I'm Adam Weiner.
You can find me on Twitter at Adam Weiner.
Twitter has now limited the amount of times you can post in a day, for some reason, to 50 if you're not verified, which is a shame cause I wanted to quote tweet yesterday's final score graphic with fuck you 51 times, but it wouldn't let me, so that, that sucks for me.
Um, I'm gonna be Trying to relax for about a month now, but I'm definitely gonna be stupid New York Yankees cause uh they, they just continue to ruin my life.
The Knicks are back tomorrow.
Feels crazy that they're still in the playoffs after uh a week and a half with no New York Knicks games, but here they come.
Hopefully, that's a welcome distraction and not an unwelcome one.
you can read.
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Thomas Carranante, where can the people find you?
At Tommy_takes, we are both at the official Yanks Yard account at Yanksyard.
FS.
So take your aggression there.
We don't need to just Limitted to the chat about Luis Arriz.
Come on, let's bring it to social media.
Um, don't forget to like and subscribe to the YouTube channel, Yanks Goyard.com.
That's where all the content is.
Blue Jays here.
Um, yeah, do it or don't.
Oh, we just did it.
We just did it.
Elmer down.
Weird, Giovanni Cruz up.
So what's the rotation situation now?
They said Elmer was gonna go one more.
Elmer was gonna go on, uh, on Friday, and you can't bring him back up without an injury deal.
It's either Brendan Beck on the bump on Friday against the Rays, or they've sped up Gerritt Cole's timeline after he drank 4 shots of espresso and threw 99.6 in his rehab outing this week.
So, um.
Mm, yeah, you wanted a bullpen jumpstart?
Is he a savior?
No.
Is he more interesting upside-wise as a fresh arm than Yeri or another long man?
Yes.
Uh, so surprised they didn't DFA Yarbs, surprised they didn't DFA Paul Blackburn.
They ditched the rotation option for Giovanni Cruz, so let's see how this turns out.
Cool.
We'll talk to you on Thursday, everybody.
See you.
When we'll know a little bit more about Giovanni Cruz, I'm sure he'll be, I'm sure we'll all hate him by Thursday, but shout out to everybody who watched and listened to the Inca Yard podcast on YouTube, your favorite podcast platform.
Until next time, I'm Adam Weiner for Thomas Carante.
See y'all.
